[Feature Request] On-Screen Keyboard on RetroPie

hydroxide

The point of using RetroPie is to play some nostalgic games you used to play as a kid for fun. That is awesome, but the thing that really takes away the fun is having to take out a keyboard whenever you need to change settings. Most people don't want to rummage through their house to find a keyboard, plug one in to the Raspberry Pi, change the settings, then unplug it, and then never use it again. Some people don't even have a keyboard laying around in their house that they could use for this, myself included. It would be great if there was an on-screen keyboard on RetroPie so that we all could change the settings with the controller we already are using with it. Can the devs put that into RetroPie?

meleu

@hydroxide I would like to see an On Screen Keyboard on emulationstation too. But maybe you would like to know that you can access your raspi via SSH, and many configs can be done this way. ;-)

BenMcLean

You still have to type in wifi passwords and similar stuff when you're with the thing at a friends house or whatever and you don't want to figure out SSH then.

I suggest something based on the Danzeff virtual keyboard which was an excellent, very intuitive way to type using a gamepad on many PSP homebrews. It uses the analog stick with the four action buttons to choose letters.

Also, I'm working on trying to get RetroPie to support the XBox 360 Chatpad which would be an elegant solution to this problem for anyone using XBox 360 controllers.

sahelX

@hydroxide I agree with you about the usefulness. I used a virtual keyboard on Lakka and it also helped me to find roms by name in a faster way.

urdazed1

This may be a dirty word here but Recalbox has this supported natively so I would imagine it's not a difficult task. Would love to see this as well, mainly for wifi login ability.

cyperghost

@BenMcLean That isn't true - you can import WIFI settings with wifikeyfile. You always have native access to /boot partition with any OS. So there is no need for keyboard input.

lilbud

@meleu While there is SSH, think about the people who have their setups not connected to any wifi network. Like my Radiocade for example, I have it setup in my workshop, in my basement. So getting a stable enough internet connection for file transfers and SSH is difficult, to say the least.

pjft

I have had the need for that myself, exactly for non connected devices or when I just don't want to get a keyboard out but need to enter some metadata text.

There's not a single dirty word in what you said. I think it's great that others also develop EmulationStation in different ways!

I don't think there's anyone working on that directly for our version. If the original developer would want to submit that code as a PR to our fork, I imagine it'd be more than appreciated.

Anything other than that would effectively mean that it needs to be developed from scratch, or someone would copy that code here, though that is far from ideal from a development and maintenance standpoint, not to mention that "coming code" without involving the author is somewhat against the spirit of open source.

So we're kind of in a conundrum, for the time being.

There's nobody working on this at least for the time being, and I'm not sure it's on anyone's radar.

EctoOne

There is an old version that apparently had that feature. https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3121/emulationstation-mod

pjft

@EctoOne a mod is not an official version. I suppose what you mean is "there's a version with it based on an old release of ES". :)

BenMcLean

@cyperghost said in [Feature Request] On-Screen Keyboard on RetroPie:

@BenMcLean That isn't true - you can import WIFI settings with wifikeyfile. You always have native access to /boot partition with any OS. So there is no need for keyboard input.

I guess most people's autism power level is not high enough to know about that. What is that and how does it help me get on the wifi at my friend's house which I didn't know about ahead of time without a keyboard or an ethernet cable?

BuZz

@benmclean said in [Feature Request] On-Screen Keyboard on RetroPie:

I guess most people's autism power level is not high enough to know about that.

What is that supposed to mean ? This is in the documentation btw.

BenMcLean

@buzz said in [Feature Request] On-Screen Keyboard on RetroPie:

@benmclean said in [Feature Request] On-Screen Keyboard on RetroPie:

I guess most people's autism power level is not high enough to know about that.

What is that supposed to mean ? This is in the documentation btw.

I'm pretty sure what's in the documentation does not do what I said.

herb_fargus

@benmclean then you did it wrong.

cyperghost

@benmclean The feature of key import was introduced here and the bash version is able to append several keys to the wifi setup ....

Or you can edit manually whatever you want or willing to do

mediamogul

@benmclean

What is that and how does it help me get on the wifi at my friend's house which I didn't know about ahead of time without a keyboard or an ethernet cable?

OSK merits aside, It's not that difficult to prepare for this type of situation. I have an extremely small bag that I use to transport my Raspberry Pi when I travel and I always pack two controllers, a retractable Ethernet cable and a keyboard/Airmouse/Learning Remote combo device that's the size of a small remote control. This, along with a pre-installed browser for openWifi authentication handles just about any problem your likely to run into with a very small footprint of space.

BenMcLean

@mediamogul said in [Feature Request] On-Screen Keyboard on RetroPie:

@benmclean

What is that and how does it help me get on the wifi at my friend's house which I didn't know about ahead of time without a keyboard or an ethernet cable?

OSK merits aside, It's not that difficult to prepare for this type of situation. I have an extremely small bag that I use to transport my Raspberry Pi when I travel and I always pack two controllers, a retractable Ethernet cable and a keyboard/Airmouse/Learning Remote combo device that's the size of a small remote control. This, along with a pre-installed browser for openWifi authentication handles just about any problem your likely to run into with a very small footprint of space.

Oh, I attempted to solve this by getting an XBox 360 Chatpad for my XBox 360 wireless controller, but that didn't work due to RetroPie using old drivers. I plan to run a test with the newer patched driver soon but in the meantime, can you recommend a good specific airmouse / tiny keyboard device such as you mentioned? I think that would be worth getting generally even if I wasn't using it for Raspberry PI stuff.

mediamogul

@benmclean

The old standby that everyone always recommends for the Pi is this one. I've used it myself in the past and it always seemed to work well. Currently, I use an iPazzPort model that eliminates the trackpad for an airmouse, making it even more compact, but currently it doesn't appear to be available anywhere.